


Seen

by ice_hot_13



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-27 02:58:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18295469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ice_hot_13/pseuds/ice_hot_13
Summary: Suddenly, Larry looks exactly like he used to, and he isn't ready.





	Seen

**Author's Note:**

> AU! Extreme liberties taken with ~science. I'm very intimidated by a comic-based fandom, but so very in love with the show

Despite knowing what would happen, Larry was wholly unprepared.

The radiation had drawn into him, like after more than half a century, it had decided to infect only Larry. Things had picked up quickly after that: Niles had been working on the procedure for years, Larry had been taking doses of the produced serum for months and had kept up with the checkup reports: his internal organs remained in their strange, suspended state, but the deepest layers of his skin were healing. Oddly, his nails had come back relatively easily. He knew Niles had been working on this for him; Larry, like Rita, had complex issues that were wrapped up in one temptingly simple problem: skin.

Rita was merged with something else, like a substance had seeped into her whole body and turned it into something else, but Niles’ longstanding and so far unproved theory was that control over the final barrier – skin – would corral her body’s ability to change shape, giving her more control over the process. So far, there had been no progress.

Larry was merged with something too, but his was an _other,_ and it hadn’t become him so much as shared him, and it had come from somewhere so far away, Larry was sure they’d never reach it. Larry’s secondary issue was, in comparison, shockingly simple: his skin had been burned beyond recognition, a side effect rather than a symptom. The new procedure had come when the radiation had abruptly backed off; maybe the being inside him had learned to control it, or maybe had abruptly decided to start doing so.

Despite the abundance of warning signs telling him that the treatment would be successful, Larry still wasn’t ready.

He thought he was – how could he not be? There were no downsides. He would be put into something similar to an induced coma for the final step, an accelerated recovery that would fix everything in the eight days he slept. Everything external, anyways; his appearance was the simplest of his broken pieces. Niles said it was easier to prompt the regrowth of skin and hair than to understand what was keeping everything else functioning as if he’d paused in his thirties, introducing external accelerants that would affect nothing else. A band-aid fix, Niles had said, giving him the appearance of a functional body if not the substance. Larry had wondered only if the negative spirit inside him would leave him during the eight days; it would be the least disruptive interaction they’d ever had, if so.

Before being put under, Larry’s last thought was to wonder if maybe the spirit would sleep, too.

\--

Waking on the eighth day felt like waking only moments later. The monitors at Larry’s bedside beeped in different rhythms, and he could hear Niles clattering around with them.

“Completely successful!” Niles reported from somewhere outside Larry’s field of vision. Larry wore a breathing mask, probably replacing the breathing tube he’d likely had earlier. He hadn’t wanted to know details beforehand. Larry drew in a breath, blinked up at the ceiling. He could feel air on his skin, prickling from the air conditioning, and the sensation was unsettling. His fingers twitched, wanting to pull something over to cover him.

“Everything’s fine?” He tried to say from behind the mask, voice hoarse.

“Oh, my!” Rita’s voice floated over from the doorway, and then her heels clicked across the floor of the small infirmary room. “Look at _you!_ You’re a handsome thing. I always knew it, you can tell from the voice.”

“You’ve seen pictures from before,” Larry pointed out.

“Nothing like the real thing!” Rita approached his bedside, gently removed the breathing mask for him after a nod from Niles. She looked down at him, smiling, but there was no recognition on her face. She _knew_ him, Larry knew that, but she didn’t recognize him now. For the first time, he looked like himself, and when Rita looked at him, she actually saw him.

“Oh, look at you,” Rita shook her head, gazing down at him, “fresh as a daisy, and like nothing ever happened to you.” She could _see_ him, not the new-him, bandaged and damaged, but – him.

Larry was not ready to be seen.

_\--_

As soon as Larry was cleared to leave the infirmary, he hid. He fled to his room, the safety of his own bed, and didn’t turn on the lights so he wouldn’t be able to look in the mirror. Niles had blessedly left him to view his own reflection in private, and wouldn’t know that Larry was just too goddamn scared to do it. He curled beneath the blankets, staring at the heavy door across the room; maybe he was just reacting to the lessening of radiation. Maybe the anxiety and trembling was because he’d gotten used to a certain level, and felt weak in its reduction. That could be it.

When he slept, in fitful starts and stops, he was still bandaged. He was with John, standing beside him on a runway. John stared at the empty runway, squinting into the sky.

“I was in love once,” John sighed, didn’t look at him. “Part of me is just waiting for him to come back. Every time I saw him – I’d look at him, and just want to fall apart.”

“Why?” Larry asked, ached to touch him. John didn’t seem to have heard him.

“You just look at someone, and you can see everything you’ve done together, everything you could’ve been. Like the embodiment of your past and future.”

“John,” Larry pleaded; John still didn’t look at him. “It’s me.”

“Could be,” John shrugged, “it’s something he’d do, hide his face so I couldn’t think about him.”

\--

The others gave Larry two days before they came knocking with purpose, and not just to deliver food he couldn’t stomach. Cliff came first, must have been forcing himself to wait until a semi-reasonable time in the morning. He’s settled on seven fifteen, apparently.

“Hey, buddy, when am I gonna get to see how hot you are now?” Cliff called through the closed door. Larry’s stomach twisted at the thought. He could suddenly picture Cliff like he’d been there years ago, shaking his head and laughing at Larry. _Look at you,_ he could hear Cliff saying, but didn’t know why, what Cliff was seeing. Larry had always had a terribly expressive face. “You’re feeling okay, right?” Cliff asked after a pause. “Are you dead in there? Larry!” A note of panic had crept into his voice.

“I’m fine,” Larry called back. He was fine. He was. He still hadn’t looked in the mirror, or turned on the lights. Just looking at his hands in the dark made him shake, and he’d wrapped himself in clothing and blankets so he could feel as little skin as possible.

“You can come out, you know. I’m not mad I’m the only ugly one left. Not that mad, anyways.” A pause. “I’m joking, Larry. You were a cute mummy.”

“Don’t worry, I’m fine.” Larry repeated. He should have been remembering the radiation chamber, talking to John through the intercom and not seeing him. He wasn’t; the brush of his hair against his forehead was making him remember other things, John’s fingers in his hair, fingertips against his skin, and it _felt_ real now. Larry felt like he might shake apart. “I’ll come out soon,” he added, didn’t mean it.

\--

When a third day passed, it brought Rita to his door.

“You aren’t even eating!” she scolded, collecting a tray she’d left earlier. He couldn’t bear the thought of food, or the light in the hallway, or the sight of his own hands. “Larry, why are you acting like you’re traumatized!” She sounded close to stamping her foot. “Unless – oh, Larry, did it wear off?!”

“I’m fine,” Larry gritted out. How could he be mad at her, though? He was spitting on her greatest dream: the return to a normal-looking body.

“Then get out here and look fine!” She stomped down the hallway. It should have been Rita; she should have been the one to be handed this gift. She would be floating through the mansion, the happiest they’d seen her in years, beaming and beautiful and entirely held together. Maybe she’d be a movie star, or maybe she’d just sail down the sidewalk and revel in the admiring looks and the way it felt to be normal again. Larry was cowering, sick and anxious and guilty. He thought he might throw up if he looked in the mirror and saw himself exactly the way he used to be. He’d lived through sixty years but suddenly felt only a day removed from the accident, or maybe the day before, like it was about to happen again. He’d felt removed for decades, and suddenly here he was, thrown back into his old self.

\--

On the fourth day, Larry conceded.

He couldn’t hide from this. He’d hidden from his own face for decades, had even been, in a sick way, grateful he couldn’t recognize himself. He didn’t want to see himself the way everyone in his life had seen him; he wanted to leave all of it behind and become a new person, be fully banished from his old life. He didn’t have to return to it, he’d reasoned, because he wasn’t the same anymore. It had been the easiest excuse in the world – he didn’t have to explain the monster inside him to John, didn’t have to apologize to his wife, or tell his children he’d allowed their mother to pretend he was dead so they could move on without him. They wouldn’t have recognized him anyways.

Ultimately, though, what pulled him out of bed and to the window was his plants. Their leaves were starting to droop from the lack of sunlight, and after decades of selfishness, Larry couldn’t let it extend to his plants, too, so he opened the curtains. The spirit in his chest flickered with interest, and he could feel it pulse. It was restless after days in the dark,

“Sure,” he muttered, squinting at the bright sunlight streaming through the window. “Might as well see what you took from me.” Larry crossed the room, stepped in front of the mirror, and recognized himself for the first time in years.

And suddenly – he could be in any passed day. He could be only moments from seeing John again, could be about to walk out of this room and put his kids to bed, slip right back into his old life. He wasn’t, never had been, any other person than he’d been all along. It still felt familiar – his pale green eyes, his curling hair, his sharp cheekbones, even though he hadn’t seen any of it for years, it still felt like his. He was the same.

It was almost impossible not to reach for the bandages again. He turned his back on the mirror immediately, and compromised by reaching for his old gloves, so the only skin he could see was his fingertips. He added a jacket over his shirt, too, pulled up the hood, tried to pull it further forward to cover his hair. How had it gotten so long in such a short time? John used to wind the curls around his fingers. Larry suddenly couldn’t stop thinking about him – not his usual occasional pang, but now relentless, his own body a constant reminder.

Larry had to stop thinking about him, or he wouldn’t be able to function. It took a few moments, taking unsteady breaths and squeezing his eyes shut, before he could make himself leave the room. He half expected the hallway in his own house to reappear.

To their credit, the others didn’t all turn at once to look at him, when he came into the living room. Rita kept her eyes on her knitting, seated in an armchair by the window.

“Hello, Larry,” she said, her voice like a bell, bright and crisp. There was the barest hint of unhappiness; looking at him hurt her, reminded her that he had what she couldn’t, and didn’t even _want_ it. Cliff did turn around on the couch, lingered for a moment longer than a casual glance, giving away his shock.

“So you aren’t dead after all,” he said, turning back, “that’s always good news. Unless you’re here to change the channel.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Larry moved to the armchair by Rita’s, the farthest forward. They could all see him, and were definitely staring, but at least he couldn’t see them doing it.

“Hey,” he heard, Baby Doll’s little voice; she was lying on the couch beside Cliff, attention drifting from the TV to Larry. “Who’s that?” she sat up, quizzical look on her face.

“That’s Larry,” Cliff told her. Larry wondered if Cliff found it easier to be removed from his past self, too, but doubted it. Cliff approached his grief in a way Larry had never been able to: Cliff shouldered it fully, accepted it, was seeking out his daughter again. He was ready to find her, without needing to look like himself. Larry could have gone to John at any point in the last sixty years – and here he was, thinking about John again. Larry had boxed up his grief and left it in the house that belonged to the person he no longer was; Cliff carried his grief with him, and insisted he was still the same person he’d always been.

“It’s just me, Baby Doll,” Larry said, wondered if sounding the same was enough, when he looked so different. Baby Doll made a face.

“No, you’re playing a trick on me. Larry looks like a mummy. Where’s the real Larry? Are you hiding him?” Her eyes went huge, and she looked at Cliff. “Did he murder Larry?” she whispered, horrified. Larry groaned.

“No, of course not. How do you come up with this stuff?” Cliff reached to pat her on the head, very gently, “that’s Larry. He just took off the mummy bandages.” _Murder?_ He mouthed at Larry and Rita; Rita shrugged.

“She’s had a troubling childhood,” Rita offered, “or maybe she watches too many mafia movies. I know you let her watch the Godfather with you.”

“I was watching it with The Hangman’s Daughter at first,” Cliff protested, “she likes art, and classic movies totally count.”

Right as Baby Doll was beginning to look at Larry with something approaching friendliness, her gaze shifted sharply, and Baby Doll was gone. Larry sunk lower in his chair, withering under the stare he recognized. _You were in the air force,_ he reminded himself, his usual Hammerhead-facing mantra, _and you’re scared of a little girl?_

“Hammerhead,” Rita cut in, sharp, “behave yourself. Larry is recuperating.”

“From what, the hangover after becoming handsome?” Hammerhead snorted, “kind of pointless now that his boyfriend’s dead, isn’t it?”

She was just being dramatic. And Larry knew, logically, that John was dead. He knew that. In the back of his mind, he’d known it for years. And yet – suddenly looking the way he did when they were together, his heart had felt like John was like this too, thirty-five again and young and alive.

“What boyfriend?” Cliff asked, “I _knew_ you were gay! I mean. I support you, in being gay. This means you’re gay, right?”

“ _Stop saying gay,”_ Larry muttered, head in his hands.

“Hammerhead! _”_ Rita’s tone was ice. “You’re being extremely cruel. Stop that at once!”

“What? It’s just a fact. Dude’s dead.”

“Is he really?” Larry whispered, because – did she know that? Was it true? Of course it was, logically, but – was it?

“No, he looks just like you,” Hammerhead flopped back against the couch, rolling her eyes. “All young and shit. And a hundred years old.”

“ _Is he dead?”_ Larry was begging, could hear the pitifulness in his voice. Had she looked it up? Did she know? He’d never been able to do it. Once, he’d tried; he’d typed John’s name into Google, started sobbing before he hit enter, and hadn’t tried since. He didn’t deserve to know. He deserved to feel like he’d killed off everyone in his old life, and live without closure or answers.

“Larry, don’t listen to her,” Cliff broke in, “she doesn’t know.”

“Jane knows,” Hammerhead taunted, “she looked it up. Probably never told you because finding out he’s dead wouldn’t be much of a pick-me-up. Or maybe she told him you’re alive, and he said he didn’t want to see you.”

“He said that?” Larry had to clasp his hands together to stop the trembling. He felt on the verge of sobbing, desperate and pleading. _God,_ he just wanted John, wanted him _here._

“She’s talking nonsense,” Rita interjected, reached to touch his shoulder; Larry flinched.

“How do you know who she’s talking about?” he asked, rearing back, “I never told you. I never told anyone. Only Niles knew, and I didn’t even tell him myself.”

“Honestly, Larry, is that important right now?” Rita dropped her gaze, pressed her fingertips to her quivering cheek. She knew about John, at least enough to know not to talk about him. Maybe Niles had warned her off; it was odd, in retrospect, that she’d never asked about his relationships when talking about his old life. She was so inquisitive about everything else: what did he do with the airplanes, what did the uniform look like, had he seen any of her pictures, who were the stars he’d seen if he’d been so busy watching other actresses and not her, why did he bake chicken like that? And yet, never once asked if there’d been anyone else in his life.

“Do you have to instigate shit?” Cliff was asking Hammerhead, “where’s Baby Doll? Or Jane? Or _anyone_ else? Someone _nice?_ ”

“Doesn’t matter who tells you,” Hammerhead shrugged, propped her ankle on the opposite knee, arms spread on the back of the couch. “We all know.”

“Know _what?”_ Larry pleaded, “Is he dead? Did he talk about me? Did she talk to him?” He couldn’t even _hide,_ they were all looking at him, they could _see him,_ and he was a shaking mess.

Hammerhead threw her feet to the floor, stood in a quick motion. “You’re such a fucking coward.” And she was gone, taking any answers she may have had with her, leaving Larry in her wake.

Larry couldn’t stand being _looked at_ anymore; he fled in the opposite direction, back to his room. He closed the curtains again, too scared of the sight of himself to allow his plants the light.

\--

Larry returned downstairs late in the morning, and had the impression Rita had been waiting for him to appear to serve breakfast.

“Good morning!” She greeted him, sweeping by him with a platter in her hands. The smell of waffles floated in her wake. “You’re just in time for breakfast.”

“More like lunch,” Larry mumbled, rubbing at his eyes. It was bizarre to be able to touch his face and feel something real there; he flinched at the sight of his pale fingertips. His hands felt too smooth without the bandages over his fingers. He followed her to the dining room, where Cliff was sitting at the long table, directing dramatic sighs at the plates of food. Larry had only picked at food in the past few days, but still couldn’t stomach much; Cliff staring at him in jealousy didn’t lessen his guilt. Another thing he had that someone else coveted and he failed to appreciate.

“You look like you barely slept,” Rita said, settling into her seat at the head of the table, Larry and Cliff to her left. Larry shrugged.

“I’m okay.”

“You don’t look okay.” Her fork froze mid-air as she heard herself. “You know what I mean,” she redacted stiffly, chin up. “I’m not trying to be rude, I’m concerned about you.”

“I think he’s allowed an adjustment period,” Cliff said, tone light, “it’s hard being beautiful. Huh, Larry? I’d know. I used to be pretty hot stuff. No big deal.” He looked between Larry and Rita. “Tough crowd today.”

“Where is Jane?” Larry asked, staring at the tabletop.

“She left yesterday, after the, uh.” Cliff waved a hand vaguely, “do you want to talk about it?”

“No, I don’t want to talk about it.” Larry poked at the waffle on his plate, managed a few bites.

“As far as coming outs go, I think that one went great,” Cliff tried. Larry slumped further, pulled at his hood. “Hammerhead was probably lying through her teeth. I don’t think she knows how to tell the truth. Are you really gay? Cuz, we support you. Want a hug?”

Maybe John was dead. Maybe Jane had talked to him, told him Larry was alive and hiding from him; maybe the last thing he’d ever do to John was hurt him. Maybe that wasn’t all – his kids were probably still alive, too. Why wasn’t he torn apart over that, too? Maybe because he knew they were better off without him. They probably didn’t even remember him. God, he was such a cowardly asshole, letting some other man sweep in to raise his children and erase his memory, because it was easier than any other path. He was a _bad person,_ and he was the same man he was before. No rebirth. No starting over. It was just him, except now he was here – same green eyes, same hands, same lips that kissed John over and over – sixty years later, set adrift from his past life, but not from himself.

“As lovely as this is for breakfast conversation,” Rita tried to change the subject, “perhaps we could-”

“You tried to find your kid immediately,” Larry blurted out, looking to Cliff. “I didn’t.”

“You didn’t… look for Clara?”

“No. My kids. I didn’t try to find my sons.”

“You have kids?” Cliff sounded baffled. “ _And_ you’re gay? Man, you don’t tell me anything. I’m kind of hurt.”

“My wife came to see me, and she didn’t bring them. She told them I was dead.”

“You had a _wife?_ Do I not understand how being gay works?”

“I grew up in the thirties,” Larry said through gritted teeth. “Not a great time to be a queer.”

“Larry,” Cliff set a heavy hand on his shoulder, “I love you.”

“Excuse me?”  

“I am leading with love,” Cliff insisted, “and listening with intention. Larry, that sounds like hateful language someone else used on you, and there’s no place for it in this house. Because we love you.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Yes, Cliff, what in the world is going on?” Rita added, “you sound like a cheap therapist.”

“What? I’m doing what the website told me to do when your kid comes out of the closet. I googled this.”

“You googled this.” Larry rubbed a hand over his face, the sensation still alien, “you aren’t my _parent,_ Cliff. I don’t need support. I need to know where Jane is. Rita? No idea?”

“I’m sure she’ll be back soon enough. Now please, Larry, you really do need to eat something.”

They ate in silence for a while, punctuated by Cliff’s food-woe-related sighs. Both Cliff and Rita kept sneaking looks at Larry, clearly not used to the sight of him. Finally, Rita spoke.

“Fine, I’ll say it,” she announced, “everyone’s thinking it anyways, Larry-”

“There’s only two of us besides him,” Cliff interjected.

“You look perfectly normal, and you’re moping about like _this_ is what ruined your life! Even before those horrible things Hammerhead said. What is _wrong_ with you?” She’d always been blunt; during his first few weeks at the manor, when he was a miserable wreck facing his new reality, she’d shaken him out of it by telling him _you’re stuck here, Larry, so you could try liking it. At least you aren’t alone anymore._ Back then he’d thought the absence of loneliness was because he had a friend who truly understood him, but now thought that wasn’t entirely true. He’d just pretended to be someone new, and it was infinitely easier than being himself.

“I just need to adjust,” Larry said, pushed his chair back and stood, “I’ll be fine. Soon.”

Rita lifted a shoulder slightly, chin high. She could still tell when he was lying; Larry had shared some traits with his prior self after all.

\--

He’d managed to forget about the thing that lived inside him, in the midst of his new misery. Unthinkable, that his worst problem could be _forgotten,_ but he was genuinely surprised when it abruptly decided to rear its head, leaving him crumpled on his bed, yanking him into one of those manipulated dreams that felt both alarmingly real and disappointingly false.

He stood on the sidewalk in front of his house, but it wasn’t a memory. He looked like himself, but that was the new normal, wasn’t it? The house was all wrong: a different color, new blinds on the front window, a shiny suburban in the driveway, an addition rising from the roof.

“What the _fuck_ is this?” he hissed, to no answer. It was trying to show him something, and he really, really didn’t want to find out what.

The front door opened, and a woman his age stepped out, juggling a dog’s leash and a wrapped birthday present. “I’m leaving without you,” she called back into the house, to the sound of tiny running footsteps.

“Who are they?” Larry crossed his arms over his chest, took a few steps backwards. He knew the people weren’t real, just dream figures, but still felt out of place, like he might frighten them.

A little boy joined the woman, stopping on the front step to put on his shoes. “Mommy, what kind of cake will they have?”

“I don’t know, you’ll have to wait and see, Jake.”

“That isn’t my son,” Larry told the spirit. “Obviously. That isn’t even Cheryl, and that isn’t Jacob.” Same coloring as Jacob, maybe. Same nose. But that wasn’t Jacob, he just resembled Larry’s son. And resembled the woman Larry was watching. In front of his old house.

Larry realized it abruptly, felt the color drain from his face. The little boy was surely named after his grandfather – Jacob. The spirit was showing Larry that his son’s daughter owned the house now, and lived there with her children.

“I don’t want to see this,” Larry snarled, filled with a sudden, aimless fury, “I don’t know them. They don’t know me. What good does this do anyone?”

The dream restarted; now he was in the pickup truck, at the train crossing, with John.

“Nice try!” Larry shouted at the sky. “You can’t _placate_ me with this!” He jumped out of the bed, to John’s soft protests, “No! This isn’t _real,_ it doesn’t _matter._ What, you think you’re helping me, showing me that my kids’ families are out there somewhere? They _don’t care_ about me. It’s _over._ My time – it’s passed, it’s over, I’m not relevant to them. None of them know me, or need to.”

“I wouldn’t tell Jane I didn’t want to see you,” John said, and Larry whipped to face him.

“Oh, please, how could you know what Jane did or didn’t do?” Larry snapped, looking from John to the sky, the only place he could think to direct his words to reach the spirit.

“You know me, though,” John insisted, “you know that I’d never turn you away.”

“You _aren’t real.”_

“You know the real John,” said the apparition with John’s face, and Larry’s strength crumpled. He sank down to sit, back against the tire, and wait for the dream to end.

John would have welcomed him back; it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d come to John with a ridiculous story about a negative spirit possessing him, with radiation flooding his body and burning him beyond recognition, if it had been a year or ten years later, John would have loved him. Larry didn’t have to have tortured himself; he could have seen John again.

\--

The early evening was warm, bringing out crickets somewhere in the dark. Larry sat in one of the lawn chairs, watching the stars come out. He’d spent all day outside, tending to his plants; there were no reflective surfaces outside, and no one to look at him.

He didn’t look up when he heard footsteps; sixty years, and he recognized the way Rita picked her way through grass, the displeased little sighs she’d give if she saw mud, her pleased murmur at his flowerbeds. She settled into the chair beside his, wordlessly held a glass out to him in one slender hand.

“Thanks,” Larry took it, swirled the amber liquid. “I’m sorry for not being more grateful about getting all this back. I know it’s hard for you.”

“I’m sorry too,” Rita said; ice clinked in her own glass, and Larry could smell mint from her drink; knowing Rita, it was a mint julep. Springtime was for mint juleps, she said. Summer was for mojitos. “I imagine it isn’t easy to appear unscathed.”

“Rita…”

“No, I mean it.” She reached over, set her hand on his wrist, “if I looked the way I always did, I imagine I’d be frustrated that I couldn’t just waltz back into my old life like nothing had changed. Being a hideous monster isn’t enjoyable, but it is… grounding.”

“I felt like a different person, with the bandages, and the radiation,” Larry mumbled, “and it was easier. No one who looked at me saw _me._ ”  

They sat in silence for a while, drinking and watching the seemingly immobile stars. Sometimes, Larry couldn’t believe he’d ever been closer to them.

“It wasn’t Jane who found him,” Rita said suddenly.

“Which one was it?”

“It was me.” She didn’t move, even when Larry flinched and looked over at her. “And it was many years ago.”

“You _saw John?_ Why didn’t you tell me?” Could his heart still race? It felt like it was. Maybe that was just the spirit, because it glowed bright beneath his skin.

“He asked me not to. Right after you came to us, and Niles asked if you wanted help contacting anyone you knew. And you said-”

“I said no,” Larry leaned forward, hands tight on his glass between his outstretched legs, “I told him my kids thought I was dead and my wife wanted me to be. And that John would have a better life without a coward like me holding him back.”

“Yes, well, I thought this John person should have a say in that, so I found him.”

“You went there? You went out in public, all the way out there.”

“There were some mishaps,” Rita sniffed, “I imagine you don’t remember my absence. You were busy being constantly knocked unconscious by that thing inside you. I don’t think you two had worked out a system yet.”

“I don’t think we have a system _now,”_ Larry muttered under his breath.

“I asked one of Niles’ graduates to help me, and he drove me there.”

“And you saw John.” Years ago, so she’d have seen John as Larry knew him – freshly abandoned, alone, reenlisted without a reason to escape anymore. “What’d you say to him? Or – don’t. I don’t want to know what you told him.” That he was alive, probably. Ruined. Dangerous. Inhuman. “You never told me he wanted to see me.”

“He didn’t.” Rita’s voice quavered. Larry’s heart plummeted. “He thought it would be harder for you to adjust to your new life if he was around as a constant reminder of what you had.”

“He knew I was alive, and that I chose to leave him.” Larry pushed a hand into his hair, fingers clenching in the curls. John knew. All this time, John knew. He deserved to know, and he also knew Larry was refusing to see him. “Why didn’t I see him?” Larry whispered.

“You wanted him to have a full life, and you couldn’t give that to him anymore.”

“That’s not it. You know that’s not it.”

“Because you hadn’t changed,” Rita said, more soft than he’d ever heard her, “you were still the same scared man you were before that spirit got inside you.”

“He’d have taken me back,” Larry mumbled, “and we’d have been in the same goddamn place we were before. I’m no less a coward now than I was then.”

“He said that when you’re ready to hear it, he wanted me to tell you he loves you, and that he understands. And-”

“And?”

“And even if nothing had happened to you,” Rita went on, sounding almost reluctant, and so, so sorry, “you two would have had to be apart anyways, because he knew you weren’t going to choose him, so you shouldn’t be sad about what you lost.”

“What the _fuck,”_ Larry choked out, “he said to tell me he would have left me anyways? What the _shit?!”_ Electricity sparked in his chest, but he had no idea if the spirit was just as outraged, or howling an _I told you so._ He still had no idea what it was ever trying to tell him.

“He said he loves you,” Rita insisted, “he was being realistic, Larry. He didn’t want you to live with regrets you couldn’t do anything about, because then you’d never try to be a better person.”

“Better? I wasn’t – I was _scared!_ It was _dangerous_ back then! Him wanting to be with me was like a goddamn death wish, and he kept saying that if I’d just _try,_ if I’d give it a chance – like being open-minded would change anything, like if I just _believed_ or some shit, I wouldn’t get beaten to death by some asshole who -”

“Larry,” Rita cut in, “you are exactly the same man you were then. I think it’s time you looked in the mirror and realized you’re still looking at yourself.” She stood, brushed off her dress, and put her hands on her hips. “He loved you anyways, Larry. So much that he wanted you to be angry with him, so you could learn from it.”

“Is he dead?” Larry asked, the only words he had left. Rita was quiet, but she lowered herself back into the chair beside his, and when he started to sob, she reached over and held his hand.

\--

The train crossing hadn’t changed much. The warehouse had been abandoned years ago, and once Larry got past the chain link fence with the rusted chain that put up little resistance to bolt cutters, he found himself exactly where he’d been, over sixty years ago. He parked the rented truck in the same spot, climbed into the bed, and waited.

John didn’t appear, but the train did; the bells sounded the same, and he watched it pass, gaze fixed ahead like if he didn’t turn, he couldn’t tell that John wasn’t actually beside him anymore.

“I’m sorry,” he said aloud, “I should have gone to see you. Shit, I should have run away with you. I couldn’t have, but I should’ve.”

Here he was, decades later, in exactly the same spot. The same man, with the same face and same green eyes and the same hands, and when he saw himself reflected in the truck’s windows, he felt sure he would turn and see John beside him again. He could be in the exact same moment; nothing about him had changed. He could see himself, and he was exactly the same.

“I hated myself,” he said, speaking to his John who wasn’t there, “and the part of me that wanted you was the part I hated the most. I couldn’t be with you, because I was too scared to face it every day. I never would have chosen you, the self-loathing would have destroyed me.” He sighed, tilted his head back, and looked at the empty spot where John had been. “But I loved you.”

The spirit in his chest glowed, but didn’t break free; for once, Larry felt sure that he understood what it was saying, and he looked down at the flickering light. “I know. You’re here for me.”

Larry was in the exact same place he’d been before, the same man he’d always been; he couldn’t go anywhere, unless he started from here.

“Okay,” he murmured, pressed his hand against the radiating spirit in his chest, glowing beneath his palm. “Let’s go.”


End file.
